The Twelve Steps as a Sequence

The Big Book doesn’t teach us hundreds of different things; it teaches us a small number of things hundreds of times. And those few things are presented in a sequence.

When most of us began working the Steps, we saw them as simply a list, much like the Ten Commandments. Now, however, we understand that the specific sequence of the Twelve Steps is the transformative element of the Program. The Twelve Steps are a unified, interdependent whole, not a collection of twelve separate items. Each Step requires and builds on all of the earlier Steps.

As the Big Book explains on page xxii, the Twelve Steps trace exactly the same path to recovery that was blazed by the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous. That paragraph also makes clear that The Twelve Steps . . . summarize the program.

Step One is the truth about the problem: it gets our attention and gives meaning to our struggle. Step Two is the truth about the solution, based on the truth about the problem. Step Three is the truth about what blocks us from experiencing a solution. Steps Four through Nine get us unblocked. Steps Ten through Twelve keep us unblocked. Or, to put it another way: Step One is where we were. Step Two is where we wanted to be. Steps Three through Nine are how we get well. And Steps Ten through Twelve are how we stay well.

As old-timers Joe and Charlie pointed out in their workshops and in their book A Program for You, the Big Book is organized in a very deliberate sequence. Because it is a textbook for recovery, it is meant to be read and studied in that sequence. And that sequence begins this way: We have a problem. The problem defines the solution. And there are prescribed actions that can bring about a solution.

Most of us in recovery know a number of Twelve Step slogans, such as “First Things First,” “Easy Does It,” and “It Works if You Work It.” Each of these can be helpful and inspiring at various points in our recovery. But we get the most benefit from them as guideposts to a new way of life in the context of this simple three-part template of problem, solution, and program of action provided by the Twelve Steps.

If we practice each of the Steps as an individual strategy, they may give us some benefit and relief. But for them to become an unshakable foundation for living, the Steps must be practiced in the order in which they were written and lived into over a lifetime.

The Twelve Steps as Activities

The word step is both a verb and a noun.

When most of us think of the word, we tend to envision a step on a staircase—a static object that helps us move upward and forward. But the Twelve Steps are neither static nor objects. A step is also an action that can be performed by the body and the mind. This definition best embodies the Twelve Steps. They are living steps—as well as steps for living.

A list of the Twelve Steps, as they appear in the Big Book, hangs on the wall at most recovery group meetings. But these words themselves aren’t the Steps; they’re a summary of the Steps. We don’t work the Steps by reciting them, discussing them, and reflecting on them. We work the Steps by practicing them in all our affairs, as Step Twelve reminds us.

When a Twelve Step meeting focuses on Step Six, Seven, or both, the meeting tends to be short. People generally don’t have much to say about those Steps, perhaps because of the Big Book’s lack of concrete direction about them, as noted earlier.

As a result, many of us in recovery don’t actually work Steps Six and Seven—some call them the drive-by Steps. Instead, we recite them, discuss them, study them, and reflect on them. We practice the summaries on the wall instead of the Steps themselves.

This was certainly true in my case. I was sober for twelve years before I saw the difference between the Steps on the wall and the deeply human activity of working them.

The Steps on the wall are only the Cliffs Notes version of the Twelve Steps. Back in high school, if you had read the Cliffs Notes for The Great Gatsby but not the actual novel, you probably would have been able to pass a multiple-choice test on the book. You might even have been able to discuss it fairly intelligently. But you wouldn’t have actually experienced the novel. You’d have missed its essence—as well as the pleasure of experiencing all the events in it and the development of the characters as they unfolded.

Jerry: I was practicing the “wall Steps”

          When I lived in Manhattan, I went to a lot of AA meetings in the city, in Connecticut, and in New Jersey. I won’t say I was unhappy in my sobriety—it saved my life and my career—but I didn’t find the meetings that fulfilling. After three years of sobriety and recovery, the Twelve Step meetings started seeming familiar and repetitive. To me they were like trips to the dentist—necessary and healthy, but not anything I enjoyed or looked forward to.

                I was kind of puzzled by how, in meetings, some people would glow like they were at a religious revival. At that point in my recovery, I’d never felt anything like that. The Twelve Steps made sense to me, and they’d made a big difference in my life, but they never revved me up or made energy rush up my spine.

                I assumed I must have had a spiritual awakening somewhere along the way, because I was sober, I hadn’t relapsed in almost two years, and I was feeling okay. But I’d never had a mind-blowing, omigod experience.

                One day I went to a meeting in Maine while I was visiting the state. There a woman told her story about how she’d changed when she shifted from the wall Steps to the actual Steps. I’d never heard that distinction before, or even heard the term wall Steps.

                Afterward I asked her to explain it to me in more detail. That’s when she told me about the Twelve Steps as a sequence and a process, and how the Steps on the wall are just a summary of that process. Then she said, “You can’t live a summary.”

                I hadn’t heard the Steps described that way before and was stunned. The next night, I started rereading the Big Book from the beginning, this time being much more careful and thorough. From then on, each day I’d read four or five pages and examine them carefully in my mind. This time through, something about the Big Book felt different. Something about me felt different too.

                After about four months of doing this, I had a vital spiritual experience: the kind that so many people in the Program talk about. It wasn’t a profound revelation that made my jaw drop or my hair stand on end. It was almost the opposite. It was a deep sense of peace and relief—one that stayed with me and is with me still. I can feel it throughout my body.

                Then a few weeks after that, a totally unexpected thing happened. Even though I’d had a spiritual awakening—in fact, because I’d had a spiritual awakening —I started to feel resentment toward all the groups I’d gone to during those first three years of my recovery. In all that time, in half a dozen groups, and two or three hundred meetings, they’d let me get away with doing the wall Steps, especially when it came to Steps Six and Seven.

                For a few weeks, this resentment grew inside me. It got to where I’d go to a meeting and spend half the time being angry at the very people who were there to support me. And I was angry at them for not adequately supporting me!

                After about a month, I realized that my resentment had become a real problem. I needed to be restored to sanity. I called my sponsor, Nate, and said, “I’m in trouble.”

                The next morning we had breakfast, and I told him what I was feeling. It sounded bizarre, even to me. I’d had a spiritual awakening, and I was resenting Twelve Step groups because I hadn’t had that awakening sooner.

                Nate listened thoughtfully as I talked. When I was done, all he said was, “So Jerry, what character defect or shortcoming do you think is behind your resentment?”

                His comment was so on the money that it made me laugh. My spiritual awakening was absolutely, completely real. But there was still a part of me that hadn’t gotten well, and now it was rearing its head. Part of me still needed to resent something. I was actually jealous of people in other groups who had received spiritual awakenings sooner than I did. As if we were somehow in competition.

                Nate encouraged me to work Step Ten right there at the breakfast table—which of course meant working Steps Four through Nine first.

                As we finished our coffee, I was able to admit the nature of my resentment. Then I said softly to my Higher Power, “Please take this resentment away.” A moment later, our waiter appeared, gestured toward our plates, and asked, “Shall I take these away for you?” I thought, Good timing.

                My resentment wasn’t whisked away as quickly as our plates were. But I left our breakfast feeling much lighter. And over the next few days, I felt the resentment slowly leaving me, like a wound steadily healing.

Now let’s take a closer look at Steps Six and Seven and the transformation they can continue to bring about in our lives through working Step Ten.